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Wolf Hollow
by
So I held very still and waited, trying not to hear it all, hoping, even at just eleven, almost twelve, that I would never have sons of my own.
“The reasons for this paring back of synapses is a mystery, but synaptic pruning is thought to sharpen and reinforce the "correct" synapses, while removing the weak and unnecessary ones. "It reinforces an old intuition," a psychiatrist in Boston told me. "The secret of learning is the systematic elimination of excess. We grow, mostly, by dying.”
― The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
― The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
“Victoire didn't need to ask who he meant. 'It was like an exercise in hope,' she said after a pause, 'Loving her, I mean. Sometimes I'd think she'd come around. Sometimes I'd look her in the eyes and think that I was looking at a true friend. Then she'd say something, make some off-the-cuff comment, and the whole cycle would begin all over again. It was like pouring sand into a sieve. Nothing stuck.”
― Babel
― Babel
“[...]I didn't think about it. I simply didn't think about it, for years, and years and years.'
She turned back towards him. Her eyes were wet. 'Only it builds up, doesn't it? It doesn't just disappear. And one day you start prodding at what you've suppressed. And it's a mass of black rot, and it's endless, horrifying, and you can't look away.”
― Babel
She turned back towards him. Her eyes were wet. 'Only it builds up, doesn't it? It doesn't just disappear. And one day you start prodding at what you've suppressed. And it's a mass of black rot, and it's endless, horrifying, and you can't look away.”
― Babel
“A friend told me the story of visiting a Tibetan doctor who specialized in pulses. The doctor asked him a few perfunctory questions and then checked his pulse. "You've gone through a terrible breakup," the doctor said. "Your life isn't going to be the same again." The Tibetan doctor was right: something about the pulse -- its rapidity or dullness -- had provided a clue about the longing and belonging. My friend's breakup, and life, had forever been uprooted.”
― The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
― The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
“But the dream was shattered. That dream had always been founded on a lie. None of them had ever stood a chance of truly belonging here, for Oxford wanted only one kind of scholar, the kind born and bred to cycle through posts of power it had created for itself. Everyone else it chewed up and discarded. These towering edifices were built with coin from the sale of slaves, and the silver that kept them running came blood-stained from the mines of Potosi. It was smelted in choking forges where native labourers were paid a pittance before making its way on ships across the Atlantic to where it was shaped by translators ripped from their countries, stolen to the faraway land and never truly allowed to go home.
He'd been so foolish ever to think he could build a life here. There was no straddling the line; he knew that now. No stepping back and forth between two worlds, no seeing and not seeing, no holding a hand over one eye or the other like a child playing a game. You were either a part of this institution, or one of the bricks that held it up, or you weren't.”
― Babel
He'd been so foolish ever to think he could build a life here. There was no straddling the line; he knew that now. No stepping back and forth between two worlds, no seeing and not seeing, no holding a hand over one eye or the other like a child playing a game. You were either a part of this institution, or one of the bricks that held it up, or you weren't.”
― Babel
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